Teen Anxiety Can Come From Unexpected Places

By Glen Weiner, Executive Director of the Coalition to Empower our Future

The Coalition to Empower our Future was founded on the premise that young people today are facing a mental health and wellbeing challenge that is different both in kind and magnitude from what previous generations have experienced. We also believe that the cause of this crisis is multifaceted and complex. And that while social media and devices are contributors, there’s a lot more going on. So, if we were only to focus on one or two aspects of this challenge, we’d be missing key opportunities to drive meaningful change and support our kids.

So, I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when I found, at least in one case, a potential driver of youth anxiety in a seemingly innocent corner of their lives: youth sports.

I’m old enough to remember a time when kids played sports for fun. For me, it was pickup football games among friends at my elementary school or street hockey games organized in front of my neighbor’s house with our buddies and our older brothers. I played rec soccer and basketball, and Little League baseball. Eventually, I focused on tennis and ice hockey and played both in high school. Except for a few tennis clinics, none of this involved private lessons or expensive travel programs. Much like most people I knew growing up, none of it was life or death, nor did these activities define who we were or our relative self-worth.

Fast forward several decades, and I’m on the phone with a friend who is telling me about how her otherwise happy and fun-loving tween daughter had started to really struggle emotionally, so much so that my friend and her daughter’s school needed to intervene. Thankfully, her daughter is now receiving the support she needs and is doing much better. But for my friend, it was deeply concerning.

When I asked her what she thought had happened, I expected to hear an all-too-familiar story of bullying, body image issues, or the endless juggle of schoolwork and a jam-packed schedule of extracurriculars. What she said, though, was entirely unexpected – she believes it was the pressure of the travel sport her daughter was playing. It turns out her daughter is a competitive player, and the situation on the team she was playing for got so toxic that she was leaving to play for another team. It’s not an uncommon thing; my own family has experienced similar situations, but in this case, the stress of wanting to compete at a high level while not receiving the appropriate level of support from her coach caused significant turmoil for my friend’s daughter.

I want to be clear: I’m a big proponent of kids playing organized sports. As someone who has coached both his kids in multiple sports, I strongly believe that for many kids, it helps them develop both physically and emotionally. Under normal circumstances, sports can provide kids with a safe outlet for some of their stronger emotions.

But maybe somewhere along the way, we’re losing those benefits in our desire to give our kids greater and greater competitive advantages at younger and younger ages. How many of these kids are actually going to play in college, much less go pro? Perhaps there’s something worth looking into here.

It was a recent conversation with my mother-in-law that got me thinking about this. She was marveling at how busy her grandkids were during her visit with us. Someone’s always coming or going, she laughingly pointed out. But then she said that when she was raising my wife and brother-in-law, they never had all these programs and lessons. It seemed to her that for kids back then, the stakes were lower, and it wasn’t so professionalized. They were busy for sure, but not in the same way or with the same level of structure and expectation. Both of which come with benefits and costs.

Now, all I’m saying is that teen anxiety can come from unexpected places, even youth sports. And if something as seemingly positive and innocent as youth sports can be a driver of anxiety and distress for an otherwise healthy and confident young person, then what else might we be missing?

It is clear that a one-size-fits-all approach is not going to solve this complex and multifaceted challenge in youth mental health and wellbeing. We owe it to these young people to listen to them, hear their personal stories and respect the individualized nature of this challenge. That’s how we’ll get to the fulsome solutions that truly address their needs.

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